A skill your agent uses when choosing or sharpening a topic for a Harvard Law Review (HLR) Article, Essay, or Book Review so it is timely, generalist-legible, and placeable in the student-edited…

MITAuto-check passed

Install Hlr Topic Selection

skills CLI
$ npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill hlr-topic-selection -a claude-code

Project install by default; add -g for ~/.claude/skills/.

GitHub CLI
$ gh skill install brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills hlr-topic-selection --agent claude-code

Project scope by default; add --scope user for a personal install. Needs GitHub CLI 2.90.0 or later (public preview).

Manual copy
$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills.git skills-src && mkdir -p .claude/skills && cp -r skills-src/Harvard-Law-Review-Skills/skills/hlr-topic-selection .claude/skills/hlr-topic-selection && rm -rf skills-src

Use ~/.claude/skills/ instead of .claude/skills for a personal install. The folder must contain SKILL.md.

Claude Code skills documentation · loads skills from .claude/skills/

Facts

Skill name
hlr-topic-selection
GitHub stars
1.2k
Token cost
~1.4k tokens
SKILL.md length
681 words
Files
1
Skills in repo
2,387
Repo updated
First seen
Licence
MIT

At a glance

A skill your agent uses when choosing or sharpening a topic for a Harvard Law Review (HLR) Article, Essay, or Book Review so it is timely, generalist-legible, and placeable in the student-edited…

  • Works in 5 steps: Live and consequential. It engages a… → Generalist stakes. A constitutional-law… → Room for a normative claim. The area is… → …
  • Sharpening a topic for a Harvard Law Review (HLR) Article
  • SKILL.md covers When to trigger, What makes an HLR-fit topic, Fit calibration by piece type and Checklist, plus 5 more sections
  • Instructions only: no scripts, shell commands, URLs or credentials in SKILL.md

What it does

Hlr Topic Selection is an agent skill from brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills. Use when choosing or sharpening a topic for a Harvard Law Review (HLR) Article, Essay, or Book Review so it is timely, generalist-legible, and placeable in the student-edited law-review market. Judges fit and timing; it does not run the preemption search (that is hlr-preemption-check) or draft the claim.

Its SKILL.md is about 1.4k tokens, which your agent loads only when the skill is triggered. It is a single SKILL.md file with no bundled scripts.

The repository describes itself as: Journal-specific Claude Code/Codex skill packs covering mainstream journals — AER, QJE, Nature, Cell, 管理世界, 经济研究 & 200+ more — your fast track to getting published. | 覆盖主流期刊的… The licence is MIT.

When your agent uses it

  • Sharpening a topic for a Harvard Law Review (HLR) Article
  • Book Review so it is timely
  • Generalist-legible
  • Placeable in the student-edited law-review market

Example prompts

  • “/hlr-topic-selection”

Workflow steps

5 steps, taken from the first numbered list in SKILL.md.

  1. Live and consequential. It engages a current circuit split, a recent Supreme Court term, a new
  2. Generalist stakes. A constitutional-law editor and an IP editor can both see why it matters —
  3. Room for a normative claim. The area is unsettled enough that you can argue for an outcome, not
  4. Tractable in one article. A focused doctrinal lever beats a sprawling "everything about X."
  5. Placeable on the calendar. Hot post-decision topics crowd; a slightly off-cycle but enduring

What it can do on your machine

Read from SKILL.md and the folder at commit 932eb23. It shows what the files ask for, not the result of running them.

  • Tool permissions

    Pre-approves nothing: there is no allowed-tools line, so your agent's usual permission prompts apply.

    From allowed-tools in the SKILL.md frontmatter.

  • Runs code

    No scripts in the folder and no shell commands in SKILL.md.

    From the folder's file list and the shell code blocks in SKILL.md.

  • Network

    No URLs in SKILL.md.

    From URLs in SKILL.md, links to its own repository left out.

  • Credentials

    Names no API keys, tokens, secrets or passwords.

    From names ending in _API_KEY, _TOKEN, _SECRET, _KEY or _PASSWORD in SKILL.md.

Context cost

Hlr Topic Selection loads about 1.4k tokens when it runs. Until then it costs about 81 tokens; SKILL.md has 681 words of instructions outside code blocks.

Always · name and description, kept in context so the agent knows when to use it
~81
When it runs · the whole SKILL.md, loaded when a task matches
~1.4k

Estimates: characters ÷ 4, the usual rule of thumb; real counts depend on the model's tokenizer. Scripts and assets cost tokens only if the agent reads them.

Safety

Auto-check passed

The automated check found no risky patterns in SKILL.md.

Automated static check — not a guarantee. Review scripts before installing. It scans the text of SKILL.md for risky patterns (piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files, hidden Unicode, destructive commands); files beside SKILL.md are not scanned.

SKILL.md

The full file from brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills at commit 932eb23, republished under its MIT licence (© brycewang-stanford). 681 words, ~1,396 tokens.

Download SKILL.mdSave it as .claude/skills/hlr-topic-selection/SKILL.md (or your agent's skills folder).
name
hlr-topic-selection
description
Use when choosing or sharpening a topic for a Harvard Law Review (HLR) Article, Essay, or Book Review so it is timely, generalist-legible, and placeable in the student-edited law-review market. Judges fit and timing; it does not run the preemption search (that is hlr-preemption-check) or draft the claim.

Topic Selection (hlr-topic-selection)

HLR is a generalist, student-edited flagship. A topic succeeds when it is (1) of broad importance across legal fields, (2) timely — riding a live doctrinal, statutory, or social development — and (3) plausibly placeable given the seasons and the competition. The student editors who screen are smart generalists, not subfield specialists, so a topic that only a niche bar cares about is off-fit.

When to trigger

  • Picking among several possible article ideas
  • A topic feels important to you but you cannot say why it matters to the whole legal academy
  • You are unsure whether the topic is "HLR-sized" (flagship) versus a specialty-journal fit
  • Timing: a new Supreme Court decision, circuit split, or statute just changed the landscape

What makes an HLR-fit topic

  1. Live and consequential. It engages a current circuit split, a recent Supreme Court term, a new statute or regulation, or an unsettled doctrine that courts and scholars are actively fighting over.
  2. Generalist stakes. A constitutional-law editor and an IP editor can both see why it matters — the topic touches structural questions (institutional roles, rights, the rule of law) that travel.
  3. Room for a normative claim. The area is unsettled enough that you can argue for an outcome, not merely report the state of the law (the payoff lives in hlr-thesis-and-contribution).
  4. Tractable in one article. A focused doctrinal lever beats a sprawling "everything about X."
  5. Placeable on the calendar. Hot post-decision topics crowd; a slightly off-cycle but enduring structural question can stand out (timing mechanics live in hlr-placement-strategy).

Fit calibration by piece type

Piece typeWhat the topic must offerThe off-fit trap
ArticleA novel, defensible normative thesis on a consequential doctrinal problemA descriptive survey with no argument
EssayA sharp, timely intervention that reframes a live debateA half-baked Article missing the apparatus
Book ReviewAn independent claim provoked by the book, not a summaryA chapter-by-chapter book report
Supreme Court Foreword/Comment(Invited) a unifying theory of a Term or a key casePitching it uninvited as a regular submission

Checklist

  • One sentence: why this matters across legal fields, not just one bar section
  • The live development (split / case / statute / regulation) is named and recent
  • There is genuine doctrinal room to argue for an outcome (not settled law)
  • The scope is one article, not a treatise
  • Preliminary sense that the claim is not already taken (full check → hlr-preemption-check)
  • Realistic placement read against the season and competition
Show full SKILL.md (274 more words)Show less

Anti-patterns

  • A topic only a narrow specialty cares about (HLR is generalist — try a specialty journal instead)
  • "Comprehensive overview of [field]" — no thesis, no payoff, off-fit for a flagship
  • Riding a hot case so crowded that ten near-identical drafts are circulating the same season
  • Picking a topic with no doctrinal lever to pull — nothing to argue, only to describe
  • Confusing an HLR Article with a student Note (Notes are written in-house by editors, unsigned)

Timing the topic against the seasons

Because law-review placement runs on a calendar (see hlr-placement-strategy), the topic itself has a clock. A reaction to a just-decided Supreme Court case is timely but crowded — many authors race the same deadline, and editors see near-identical drafts. A structural question that is enduring but underexplored can be submitted slightly off the news cycle and still stand out. Decide deliberately whether your topic competes on speed (hot, crowded) or on novelty (enduring, less crowded), and time the draft to match.

Calibration anchors (hedged)

  • HLR's premium is broad importance plus a normative payoff; a technically excellent but narrowly specialist topic is structurally weak for a generalist flagship even when the within-field contribution is real (a specialty journal may be the better home).
  • "Timely" is not the same as "reactive": riding a fresh case is one path; reframing a long-settled assumption is another, and often less crowded.
  • Confirm any length or format guidance that bears on scope on the live submissions page before committing to a treatise-sized project — do not assume a number (待核实; see ../official-source-map.md).

Output format

【Topic】one line
【Live development】split / case / statute / regulation (and how recent)
【Generalist stake】why the whole legal academy should care
【Piece type】Article / Essay / Book Review
【Argument room】what you could argue for (preliminary)
【Competes on】speed (hot/crowded) or novelty (enduring/less crowded)
【Next】hlr-thesis-and-contribution (then hlr-preemption-check)

Supplementary resources

© brycewang-stanford, MIT. Rendered from Markdown: HTML in the file is shown as text, images as links, and headings moved down two levels. Raw file

Files

Just SKILL.md in Harvard-Law-Review-Skills/skills/hlr-topic-selection of brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills.

Open the folder on GitHubat commit 932eb23

Compare with similar skills

Hlr Topic Selection next to the 5 skills that share the most tags, products or categories with it. Stars are the repository's; “used in” counts other GitHub owners with a copy.

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Baoyu URL To Markdownsdyckjq-lab/llm-wiki-skill2.5k2 repos~3.2kAutomated safety check: PassNone
DeepTutor CLIHKUDS/DeepTutor41k—~2.8kAutomated safety check: PassApache-2.0
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Questions about Hlr Topic Selection

What does Hlr Topic Selection do?

A skill your agent uses when choosing or sharpening a topic for a Harvard Law Review (HLR) Article, Essay, or Book Review so it is timely, generalist-legible, and placeable in the student-edited…. Hlr Topic Selection is an agent skill from brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills. Use when choosing or sharpening a topic for a Harvard Law Review (HLR) Article, Essay, or Book Review so it is timely, generalist-legible, and placeable in the student-edited law-review market.

When should I use Hlr Topic Selection?

Hlr Topic Selection fits situations like: sharpening a topic for a Harvard Law Review (HLR) Article; book Review so it is timely; generalist-legible; placeable in the student-edited law-review market.

How do I install Hlr Topic Selection in Claude Code?

Run `npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill hlr-topic-selection -a claude-code`. Or copy the skill folder (Harvard-Law-Review-Skills/skills/hlr-topic-selection in brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills) into .claude/skills/hlr-topic-selection in your project. Claude Code loads it when a task matches its description.

How do I install Hlr Topic Selection in Codex?

Run `npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill hlr-topic-selection -a codex`. Or copy the skill folder (Harvard-Law-Review-Skills/skills/hlr-topic-selection in brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills) into .agents/skills/hlr-topic-selection in your project. Codex loads it when a task matches its description.

Can I use Hlr Topic Selection in Cursor, Gemini CLI or GitHub Copilot?

Cursor, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot and OpenCode also load SKILL.md folders. With the skills CLI, run `npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill hlr-topic-selection -a cursor` (or -a gemini-cli, github-copilot or opencode for the others). To copy it by hand, put the folder in .cursor/skills/hlr-topic-selection, .gemini/skills/hlr-topic-selection, .github/skills/hlr-topic-selection and .opencode/skills/hlr-topic-selection in your project.

What does Hlr Topic Selection need to run?

SKILL.md names no scripts, command-line tools or credentials: Hlr Topic Selection is instructions for the agent only.

Does Hlr Topic Selection access the network?

SKILL.md contains no URLs. Any network use would come from the scripts or tools the agent runs. This is read from the text; nothing was executed.

Is Hlr Topic Selection safe to install?

Our automated static check of SKILL.md found no risky patterns, such as piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files or hidden Unicode. It is not a guarantee. Review the folder before installing.

What licence does Hlr Topic Selection use?

Hlr Topic Selection is published under the MIT licence (the repository's licence). It allows redistribution, so the full SKILL.md is shown on this page.

How many tokens does Hlr Topic Selection use?

About 1.4k tokens (SKILL.md is roughly 5.6k characters). Agents keep only the skill's name and description in context until a task matches; then they load SKILL.md in full.

What are the alternatives to Hlr Topic Selection?

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Who maintains Hlr Topic Selection?

brycewang-stanford (a GitHub user) maintains it in brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills, which has 1,228 GitHub stars. The repository holds 2,387 skills in this directory. The repository was last updated on September 27, 2026.

Source: brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills on GitHub. Facts on this page come from the repository at the commit we read; the author's words are quoted as theirs.